I’m spoiled.
By the time I got obsessed with Star Wars and unearthed my dad’s ancient DVD copy, I never found time to watch Revenge of the Sith. Twenty years had passed. I’d seen all the memes, clips, unmarked spoilers out the wazoo, other people’s reviews of this movie, detailed diatribes from YouTube channels, and several million words of fanfic. But despite consuming all this media about Revenge of the Sith, I haven’t seen the actual movie. Not once.
I know: bad fan. As punishment I subjugate myself to another re-watch of The Star Wars Holiday Special.
But I’ve got the DVD, actual leisure time, and access to a proper big-screen TV instead of my dinky little laptop. Let’s put in the finale of the much-maligned prequels for a first-time watch: No nostalgia filters, all the spoilers. Let's see if there’s something timeless to love.
Okay, I knew this part launched a thousand 'leopards eating faces party' memes, but I was not expecting D&D shenanigans in my space opera. This movie's first half hour could’ve been one of my gaming sessions going horribly right – crashed half-ship included. Even some of the dialogue is worth a laugh.
Did I put the right movie in?
Okay, I did because we're getting to the political parts. Which, if I’d seen this as a kid, I'd have probably wandered off to fly paper airplanes at this point. But watching Palpatine seizing more and more power not through any Sith magics, just manipulation of horrible circumstances he put into place? Ouch! For a space opera in a galaxy far, far away a lot of these scenes hit almost too close to home.
Speaking of shocking political scenes, I'm surprised Palpatine didn’t entirely make up the ‘Jedi coup.’ Sure, he made Mt. Everest out of a molehill, but the Jedi Council does suggest that while discussing what they'd do if the Chancellor becomes a dictator. This moment captures the shaky moral balance war has placed on the Jedi. As Yoda hints, they aren't immune to becoming the evil they fight. In taking power from a dictator, they risk becoming the foe they fight. After all, in Star Wars, even the brightest and most heroic of people can fall to evil - no one is immune!
Which is what's kept me interested in Star Wars. The morality may be simple, but how it's applied isn't. Star Wars and especially Revenge of the Sith subverts the common idea in many stories that a person's morality is determined by birth and is unchanging. Just as in the original trilogy we see the most evil and iconic of villains become heroic, here we see the most iconic of heroes become a villain.
Revenge of the Sith's portrayal of Anakin becoming a villain, though, is a bit of a mixed bag. The dialogue runs the gauntlet from Padme’s meme-spawning: “This is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause” to Darth Vader's first "nyooooo" which got thunderous laughter. As I watch Anakin proclaiming his loyalty to Palpatine in front of his wife, I can't help but think that this part would’ve hit so much harder if those deleted scenes had been there.
The visuals though – Palpatine literally tearing apart the Senate – the last scrap of a dying democracy – to throw at Yoda, the aged Republic’s last defender! This is what I'm here for! Also, the scenes switching between Padme literally dying to give birth to a new hope while Anakin, through torturous surgery, lives to be the villain. Excellent. That moment with all the kids huddled in the Jedi Council’s chambers as Anakin ignites his lightsaber? No amount of cutting-edge special effects montage can equal the gut-punch watching these scenes delivered.
Special effects can age like ice-cream in the summer. The dialogue here is still more miss than hit. I think there are some things they should have kept and some they should’ve cut. Despite all this, Revenge of the Sith is far more impactful in 2025 than it would have my sixteen-year-old self back in 2005.
No nostalgia needed.